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Base and superstructure (Marxism)

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Base and Superstructure form a synthetic pair explicitly or implicitly common to all socialisms but due as such to Marx and Marxism where it serves to distinguish the essential basis of various social orders from various other formative and persisting social conditions.

The base is equivalent to the mode of production (MoP) and the social order enforcing it. The superstructure is the entire remainder of society, culture, technology, institutions, etc. which dialectical materialism posits as being based upon the material conditions and circumstances of production, i.e. the MoP. Critical theory and writings on the topic are mainly concerned with how the one affects and/or conditions the other. For example, Raymond Williams in 1973 wrote: "So we have to say that when we talk of 'the base,' we are talking of a process and not a state [...] We have to revalue 'superstructure' towards a related range of cultural practices, and away from a reflected, reproduced or specifically dependent contend. And, crucially, we have to revalue 'the base' away from notion of a fixed economic or technological abstraction, and towards the specific activities of men in real social and economic relationships, containing fundamental contradictions and variations and therefore always in a state of dynamic process."

As Marx wrote in the famous preface to his 1859 book A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.|20px|20px

Marx's key claim is that the base determines the superstructure, although this easily simplified relationship requires some qualification:

  1. base refers to the entirety of productive relationships, not just to a particular economic position (the working class, for instance);
  2. the superstructure varies throughout history and is frequently unevenly developed across different areas of societal activity (in art and political culture, for instance);
  3. there is an element of reciprocity between base and superstructure — an observation that Engels made explicit by claiming that the base determined the superstructure only “in the last instance.”

A modern theorist who has expanded the view of base and superstructure is Raymond Williams. Williams' theory expanded the impact of social contradictions within the traditional assumptions of base and superstructure. For example, he wrote:

"So we have to say that when we talk of 'the base,' we are talking of a process and not a state [...] We have to revalue 'superstructure' towards a related range of cultural practices, and away from a reflected, reproduced or specifically dependent contend. And, crucially, we have to revalue 'the base' away from notion of a fixed economic or technological abstraction, and towards the specific activities of men in real social and economic relationships, containing fundamental contradictions and variations and therefore always in a state of dynamic process.

See also

Notes

References

  • Calhoun, Craig (ed) Dictionary of the Social Sciences Oxford University Press, 2002

External links

  1. Basis und Überbau A German Political Lexicon Wiki.
  2. Marxist Media Theory



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